Viking fantasy gives you cold seas, longships, shield walls and gods who might be listening.
It also gives you something harder: a world built on oaths. A warrior’s word is binding. A blood feud passes from father to son. Honour is the only thing a person truly owns, and losing it can be worse than dying.
The best Viking fantasy books use that world to ask what a person owes their family, their people and their gods, and what happens when those debts pull in different directions.
Some of the books below are full-blown fantasy, with dead gods and monsters. Others are historical fiction set in the real Viking Age, with only a hint of the uncanny. All of them should suit readers who love Norse mythology and want the north in their fiction.
If you are after indie authors in particular, I have also put together ten indie fantasy books for readers who love John Gwynne.
The Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne
If you only read one book on this list, make it this one.
Three centuries ago, the gods of Vigrið went to war with each other and destroyed themselves. Their bones still lie across the land. People descended from them, known as the Tainted, carry a trace of their power and are hunted, enslaved or hired as weapons.
The story follows three characters. Orka is a former warrior living quietly with her family until her son is taken. Varg is an escaped thrall searching for the truth about his sister’s death. Elvar is a noble’s daughter fighting for glory with a mercenary warband.
Gwynne writes battles with weight and grief with honesty. The shield walls are brutal, the friendships are hard-won, and Orka is one of the great fantasy protagonists of recent years.
Read it if you want epic Norse fantasy with dead gods, monsters and characters you will follow anywhere.
Half a King by Joe Abercrombie
Prince Yarvi was born with a crippled hand in a culture that worships strength.
He has given up any hope of ruling and is training to become a minister instead. Then his father and brother are murdered, and he is pushed onto a throne he never wanted.
He does not keep it long. Betrayed and left for dead, Yarvi ends up chained to an oar as a galley slave, with only his wits and an oath of revenge to keep him going.
This is the first book of Abercrombie’s Shattered Sea trilogy. It is leaner and faster than his adult novels, but it keeps his sharp dialogue and his talent for characters who win by thinking rather than fighting.
Read it if you want a quick, clever Viking revenge story with a hero who cannot swing a sword.
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell
This is historical fiction rather than fantasy, but no list of Viking stories is complete without it.
Uhtred is born a Saxon lord in Northumbria. As a boy, he is captured by the Danes and raised by Earl Ragnar, who treats him as a son. He grows up loving the Danes, their gods and their way of life.
Then the Danes turn on Wessex, the last English kingdom standing, and Uhtred finds himself fighting for Alfred the Great, a king he does not much like.
Cornwell writes battle better than almost anyone, and Uhtred’s divided loyalty drives the whole series. If you have watched the television adaptation, the books go deeper and darker.
Read it if you want shield walls, real history and a hero caught between two peoples.
Want to try my northern warriors first?
Blades of Wolfsbane, the prequel to Ravenglass Legends, is free in my Starter Library, along with four more books, sent straight to your Kindle.
The Half-Drowned King by Linnea Hartsuyker
Ragnvald Eysteinsson should inherit his father’s lands. Instead, on his way home from raiding, he is betrayed and thrown into the sea to drown.
He survives. Now he has a debt to collect, and a vision that ties his fate to a young king named Harald, who means to unite Norway under one crown.
Ragnvald’s sister Svanhild has her own story. She refuses to be married off for someone else’s advantage, and her choices take her to the other side of the coming war.
Hartsuyker is a descendant of the real Ragnvald, and the book is grounded in the sagas and the history of Harald Fairhair. The fantasy is light: dreams, omens and the sense that the gods are watching.
Read it if you want an intimate Viking saga about family, ambition and loyalty.
Raven: Blood Eye by Giles Kristian
A young man with no memory of his past lives in an English village, marked out by a blood-red eye that makes the villagers uneasy.
When Norse raiders led by Sigurd arrive, he is taken prisoner. The Norsemen do not see a monster. They see someone touched by their gods, and they give him a new name: Raven.
What follows is a raid across England with a crew of hard, funny, loyal killers, and Raven’s slow realisation that he belongs with them.
Kristian has a gift for brotherhood. The crew’s banter and loyalty give the violence its meaning.
Read it if you want to sail with a Viking crew and feel like one of them by the end.
The Gospel of Loki by Joanne Harris
For something completely different, let the trickster tell the story.
Joanne Harris retells the Norse myths from Loki’s point of view, from his arrival in Asgard to the end of the world at Ragnarök.
Loki is vain, funny and endlessly self-justifying. He insists he has been misunderstood, and he has a list of grievances against Odin, Thor and the rest of Asgard to prove it.
The myths are all there, but seen through the eyes of the outsider who never fitted in.
Read it if you want the Norse gods with wit and a narrator you should not trust.
The Fall of Wolfsbane by Jon Cronshaw
This one is mine, and it tells the Viking story from the side of the conquered.
Ragnar Wolfsbane is fifteen and heir to Meerand, a northern land of shield walls, mead halls and stubborn pride. Then the Ostreich Empire invades.
Ragnar watches his father executed. He is taken hostage and forced to live among the people who murdered his family and renamed his home. His younger sister, Maja, is taken to the imperial capital and paraded at court as proof that the Empire civilises its captives.
One sibling learns to survive inside the Empire. The other plots to break free of it. Each believes the other is lost.
I wanted to write about what it costs to hold on to who you are when everything has been taken: your language, your gods, even the name of your home. If you liked the conquered homeland side of Gwynne or Cornwell, this is that story with wyverns and blood-forged ravenglass blades.
If you want a little more background first, here is what you should know before reading The Fall of Wolfsbane, or you can read the opening chapter.
What These Viking Fantasy Books Understand
The best Viking stories are not really about raiding.
They are about belonging. Uhtred caught between Saxons and Danes. Raven finding a family among the men who took him. Yarvi fighting for a throne that never wanted him. Ragnar and Maja trying to stay themselves inside an empire that wants to remake them.
The axes and longships are the surface. Underneath, these are stories about oaths, kin and what a person is willing to give up to keep both.
If you want to dig into the mythology behind them, I have written about what makes a fantasy world feel Norse.
Where to Start With Viking Fantasy
For epic Norse fantasy with dead gods, start with The Shadow of the Gods.
For a fast, clever revenge story, read Half a King.
For real history and the shield wall, pick up The Last Kingdom.
For a family saga rooted in the sagas themselves, try The Half-Drowned King.
For brotherhood at sea, read Raven: Blood Eye.
For the myths with a wicked grin, choose The Gospel of Loki.
And for a northern warrior and his sister fighting to survive an empire, begin Ravenglass Legends with The Fall of Wolfsbane.
Start With Blades of Wolfsbane for Free
Before the Empire came, Ragnar fought his first battles.
Blades of Wolfsbane is the prequel to Ravenglass Legends, and it is part of my free Starter Library: five books, five doors into the Ravenglass Universe, sent straight to your Kindle.
Claim your free Starter Library here.
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